<Goa is going to grow in services hospitality, finance, software, telecom which are bound to establish connections of thousands of investors, managers and traders from other states and nations to various locations in the state. How will we facilitate their coming and going if we just have one airport? Our choice seems clear: Either we have two airports and help Goa reach the pinnacle of all-round growth, or we continue with one airport and let Goa live merrily in stagnation.>[Goadesc]
Kudos to Navhind Times for taking up cudgels on behalf of two airports for Goa! This is indeed encouraging for starters. However, I feel the editors are needlessly treating the Navy with kid gloves when they say: <As it is, the traffic rush at the Dambolim airport has increased manifold over the years, notwithstanding the frequent sallies that the naval authorities stand in the way of night flights. The naval authorities have in fact expanded the civilian use of the Dambolim airport; else, the traffic would not have increased. The naval authorities have said that they could encourage night landings. Yet despite all the expansion that is possible at Dabolim, we cannot hope to make things comfortable for either the travellers or ourselves> A couple of observations about this: 1. Sure, the Navy has agreed to night landings. And yes, the obstacle here is mainly AAI which is unable to man the airport after 6:00 pm. AAI does need to answer the question of why it is not willing or able to organise for night civilian operations including night parking of more than 6 planes. The problem of inadequate parking space puts the ball back into the Navy's court for not parting expeditiously enough with the required land. 2. This raises the fundamental question of what the Navy's military mission is at Dabolim and how it is apparently being compromised by the constant need to keep an eye on civilian traffic needs. The Navy's main mission at Dabolim seems to be to respond to civilian aviation pressures in the best way it can -- usually by dithering. The Navy itself is building Dabolim into a civilian facility in a curmudgeonly way! Strange. 3. The biggest gap in the editorial is the blindspot about runway capacity being swallowed up by training flights in the middle of the traffic peak. This is not peculiar to Dabolim alone but other key Indian airports as well. The next thing NT should do would be to push for flexible airspace management in Indian civil aviation based on the Dabolim/Mopa experience. Then we would really be getting somewhere in this vexed issue.
